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EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

appleinsider.com

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Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#951

Post by Affric »

henry2023 wrote: post #561
Affric wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know nothing about markets or real life market engagement if you blindly believe "competition is always good for consumers". There are costs to competition, inherently. Competition is only of benefit to consumers if they capture the more of the new surplus utility generated by competition than they capture the new costs. There will be marketing costs, there will be the costs of the data policies of these new mode…

Curious about this answer. Do you have any example in which prices of goods and services actually went up after more competition entered an industry? In case you do, are you sure you aren't cherry picking?

I don't have any of my old economics notes nor the market reports I have read on hand but generally it's natural monopolies that have competition introduced, these are not particularly good analogue for software but they do have similarities with social media and mapping applications. Competition is generally good for consumers who are engaged but it's a means to an end. It is not good for its own sake.

Markets where competition works really well are elastic and have consumers with the appropriate amount of engagements from the consumers.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#953

Post by summm »

Sweepi wrote: post #843
Moldoteck wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you don't install fb app from another place pr don't use fb at all, privacy will be preserved, gotcha

Wrong: Dont install any App which uses the Facebook SDK (1), which you have no (sensible) way of finding out, otherwise FB will track, combine, condense and analyze your data across multiple Apps without ever asking you. (1) or any other tracking SDK

Exodus analyzes apps and shows the used SDKs: https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#954

Post by pretext-1 »

threeseed wrote: post #124
pretext-1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Safari will improve though. Currently Apple has little incentive to put more money into Safari because there’s no competition. Once they have to open up iOS to competition, they’ll spent more money on Safari to stay competitive. The web is still an important platform they cannot just ignore. And they have the resources and the know how, so they have a good chance of succeeding. And they will still be the na…

Apple invests a lot into Safari today. The reason you don't think so is because you are likely equating developer features with investment. But actually Apple just has different priorities which are security, privacy and battery life. They aren't trying to push more pro-advertising features like Google is or turn the browser into an operating system. It is delusional to think that if Chrome becomes more popular that…

Priority should be to make the browser usable. It's not. For example it’s extremely unstable for video conferencing. Last time, I don’t know what exactly happened, but I had to reboot my MacBook because the system wouldn’t recognize the camera anymore after trying to join a video conference in Safari, not even in other browsers. Never experienced something like this in any other browser. Many work tools such as Confluence, MS Teams and Google Docs just work better in Chrome. I wish I could switch, and I retry after each major release, but it’s just not good enough yet. I always end up switching back to Chrome after 1-2 days. If Microsoft and Mozilla can do better why can’t Apple?

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#955

Post by LexGray »

Apocryphon wrote: post #188
theshrike79 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When this goes through, you can be 100% sure there will be a Meta-only iOS store along with a Google iOS store and all their apps will move there. After that if you want to use apps to access any Google or Meta service, you'll need to get it from their store - that doesn't have any pesky limitations on user profiling or stupid guidelines for privacy.

I think the threat of rival app stores is highly overrated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33978081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30808926 I don't think they have the product gumption, nor do users have the patience, to deal with multiple app stores. They'll just end up abandoning those apps, at least on iOS. Also regulators will not be amused by other companies forcing users to use their own walled gard…

I should imagine large kickbacks to apps using Google and Facebook SDKs even if they do not launch stores directly. They don’t need a store if they can get every other store compromised.

I also think shareholders in those companies that lust after data would revolt if they did not try to directly take all app sale profit and install data. I would be shocked if both did not already have apps in development stage.

I think the changes Apple should make is add a little indicator to every app showing the store it was purchased from encircling the icon with the default store color to remind of non-default privacy in that app. Just green badge them all and call it a day to let people know the app will be slower going through app specific memory encryption and API filtering with new anti-piracy frameworks to combat modified or fraudulent purchases.

Perhaps some new app storefront licensing board if the EU is serious about protecting consumers. Their current policy seems half baked along the line of shutting down government is a good thing. Make single click subscription cancellation a requirement for opening a storefront with and require bond to prevent stores from just cutting and running after a few fraudulent sales.

I think it is a shame how much silicon and engineering effort this will burn to maintain device security. It may go as far as apps run through a virtual machine sandbox with limited permissions in the short term. Personally being limited on my device made me sad, but as I lack self control the restrictions helped me focus.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#956

Post by smoldesu »

bitwize wrote: post #503
kibwen wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fucking good. Seconded. Perpetually baffled by the so-called hackers in all of these threads arguing vociferously against user freedom.

Apple has done more for user freedom than the open source movement ever could, by creating products that uncompromisingly put the user first, enabling ordinary people to do things they could never do before. Tech nerds are a tiny sliver of a tiny sliver of the market; compared to the empowered users who appreciate Apple's commitment to keep its platforms secure and high quality, the number of people who really want t…

[dead]

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#957

Post by nardi »

summm wrote: post #953
Sweepi wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong: Dont install any App which uses the Facebook SDK (1), which you have no (sensible) way of finding out, otherwise FB will track, combine, condense and analyze your data across multiple Apps without ever asking you. (1) or any other tracking SDK

Exodus analyzes apps and shows the used SDKs: https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/

The fact that the data exists somewhere is small comfort if users cannot read the privacy implications in the app store itself when they're deciding whether to download an app.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#958

Post by InsomniacL »

zuhsetaqi wrote: post #919
InsomniacL wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transfer speeds by year 2001 USB: 480Mb/s 2012 Lightening 480Mb/s 2023 USB 80,000 Mb/s 2023 Lightening 480 Mb/s But just on physical characteristics, I've had to deal with multiple iPhone with a broken pins whereas broken pins for USB is just a replacement cable.

Lightning does also support USB 3 (5Gbps) speed. It was used on iPads before they switched to USB-C. Do your research before posting false information.

Not really, that requires an Apple proprietary adapter for connecting to Cameras.

If you plug one of those three models of iPads in to a computer they’ll transfer files at 480Mb/s.

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#959

Post by monocularvision »

pg_1234 wrote: post #937
Vespasian wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their hubris that lead to this. For some reasons companies always seem to believe that they have an upper hand over even the most powerful governmental structure. The very powerful people at the helm of Apple, Google and friends seem to forget that on the other side of the table there are powerful people as well and that those are quite similar to themselves. I believe a large contributing factors were the publi…

The EU is just doing to Apple what Apple does to everyone else. They're saying "our App Store, our rules" ... where the App Store is the European market. Apple should just be glad they don't take 30% off the top of all revenue as a condition of doing business.

Do you realize how it sounds to compare the power of a private corporation that sells phones and computers to government agencies that wield the power of literal violence?

Re: EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals

#960

Post by pg_1234 »

monocularvision wrote: post #959
pg_1234 wrote: post #937

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is just doing to Apple what Apple does to everyone else. They're saying "our App Store, our rules" ... where the App Store is the European market. Apple should just be glad they don't take 30% off the top of all revenue as a condition of doing business.

Do you realize how it sounds to compare the power of a private corporation that sells phones and computers to government agencies that wield the power of literal violence?

Another way to look at that is a government body looking after the best interests of it's citizens vs. a corporation just chasing maximum profit.

Given that we can be glad the corps don't wield the violence.

Imagine if Apple could force you to buy it's goods at gunpoint?

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